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Premium League Yushoketteisen: Toshie Uematsu vs. Meiko Satomura |
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This match had it's good points and bad points. Overall, I was fairly pleased because the mental aspects were better, Satomura never even got goofy. Unfortunately, the work was worse than you'd expect. I thought the early portion was good in that they showed so much patience due to what was at steak. This isn't something you usually see in GAEA, but who has time to be patient when Sid will be out to squash you in five minutes. Oops, luckily that doesn't happen here, so there's no excuse for the brevity of their matches. I mean, some of their main events end before the old Hollywood farts could even make it to the ring. Oops, that's the other league before they reverted back to being Real American wrestling. "The problem I have with you saying this is that someone who isn't overly familiar with GAEA, the talk of it being a better version (at times) of WCW, won't get the references because while they aren't vague, you don't point out why GAEA is like WCW. Yeah, Sid is like Chigusa in the sense that they squash people but Chigusa doesn't run into other people's matches because it'd take too much energy for her to do that 3 or 4 times a night and the final sentence in that paragraph doesn't make sense to the uneducated reader. You somewhat point that out (that no one runs in on GAEA matches or at least to cut the length) so it makes the comment make less sense aside from expressing your displeasure with the length of the matches (which I agree with)," wrote Michael. There are several similarities. The main program in the company for most of 1999, GAEA vs. SSU, is basically the same as WCW vs. NWO. There is more focus on angles than in any of the other women's promotions, and less focus on actual wrestling than all but maybe LLPW. The matches that don't involve LCO and aren't something like Satomura vs. Kato, especially if Chigusa are in them, range from too short to ridiculously short. Due to the short match times, the matches are generally sprints. Short matches with a lot of spots means there is very little thought put into the matches. All this means that while they use Asuka, Aja, Ozaki, and Shimoda, all top ten women, the wrestling isn't 1/5 as good as it should be. Sure, a lot of the matches are still good, but who wants to see a *** Malenko vs. Guerrero when we know they still have the ability to put on ****1/4 matches. I don't think Chigusa reminds me of Sid, she has some early Goldberg length matches against women that should be pushing her to the max, but overall she's closest to Hogan. Her wrestling is not good, but she makes sure all the focus is on her. Since she wields all the power, everyone else in the league must yield to her whether they like it or not. There is a lot of young talent in GAEA, but Chigusa won't let any of these wrestlers be seen as gaining on her. Thus, they can't be seen as credible main eventers, if they even get main events that matter. Chigusa is old and doesn't respect her students much, so she had to bring in all her old friends from when women's wrestling had some popularity in Japan. These are the only people she might have some respect for, so when she does her two jobs a year, it's not for someone that really needs to be elevated like Satomura or Kato, it's for wrestlers that have been around for more than a decade like Asuka, Devil, Aja, or Ozaki. Even with the older wrestlers, she's portrayed Yamada as being over the hill even though Chigusa was forced to retire when Yamada was a promising 19-year-old who was fighting hard to gain midcard status. Now LCO has been getting jobbed out left and right even though they are much younger and worlds better than Chigusa. Mainly, it's that there is no one to lose in SSU, so they get the KAORU role of someone who is capable of winning any match, but almost always loses to the people she "should" lose to. I thought the shoot style stuff they did was fairly good because they worked the holds and showed good intensity, but they didn't work stiff enough, which took away from the believability and intensity they were trying to display. The selling of the moves in this match at the time they happened was nothing special, but the carry over selling was very good. This is exactly the opposite of what you see in most matches, but if I had to pick one or the other I'd go with this because it shows the moves are in fact taking their toll even and they simply aren't recognizing just how much pain they are in right away. They did a good job of wearing each other down, but their methods weren't all that entertaining. The match got better as the pace picked up, but there were still too many blows that didn't look that deadly in between the high spots. They did a good spot where Satomura stopped Uematsu's backdrop and tried her overhead kick, but Uematsu turned that into a gyakukataebigatame (1/2 crab). The problem was the kick actually hit Uematsu, although in the shoulder, but she just no sold it and did the "counter." Later on, Satomura hit Uematsu in the head with this move, which is where it's supposed to hit. The last few minutes contained several near falls, but the pacing was smartly slow so they could constantly show just how much had been taken out of them. Uematsu kept avoiding Satomura's Death Valley bombs, but finally Satomura was able to do one for a near fall. Uematsu did a really good job of selling this move. She then came back with a spot that I watched like 10 times and still couldn't figure out. Satomura tried her Death Valley bomb, but then kind of dropped Uematsu to the side and fell down herself. It was played like Uematsu had done something nasty to counter the move, but I can't see where she did anything. It looked like Satomura just let her go sideways. Anyway, this was the transition that allowed Uematsu to come back with her Northern Lights suplex. Both were acting really tired and worn down at this point. They exchanged blows, and they actually looked pretty good this time, but Satomura won the exchange. This allowed her to Death Valley bomb Uematsu for the win. The finish was pretty much perfect because they were able to show how dead they were going into the exchange of blows. Satomura was quick to go into her Death Valley bomb, but it seemed logical that she saw an opening and found one last burst of energy to win the match. After all the Death Valley bombs Uematsu had countered, it made sense for Satomura to win with that move if she was going to win because it shows how deadly it is when you aren't able to avoid it, and shows why it's important to put all your energy into avoiding it. Overall, I was pretty happy with this match because it came off as a "real" final. Both women fought hard and really wanted to win. It wasn't a spectacular match, but that was okay since they stuck with the more realistic theme throughout. They used more and more spots as the match progressed, but for the most part they were incorporated in a fairly "realistic" manner. Even though submission holds were the main focus, I wasn't disappointed that it didn't end with a submission because when Satomura hit her Death Valley bomb I knew it was over. It's not an autopin move, but to keep things even and in doubt throughout, both women were equally worn down and Satomura finally delivering her big move just seemed the only way that she could have won without taking away from Uematsu's performance. Michael: This was a good, competetive match with a strong build to a excellent finish Special Thanks to: Michael Smith 19:26
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